I'm a new business and I pay about 25% to my employee. This makes sure that the expenses are covered and the business and I both make money. When I first started I was actually paying to work. I was paying about 45% to him. What I did is took the cost of all my equipment and divided it over 150 jobs per year. and said I wanted everything to be paid for in 2 years. So the business has to make atleast X dollar amount (adding that cost plus gas, vehicle maintenance, etc.) per job to reach that goal. Plus I want to make a profit as well. And as the owner of the business I should make more.

It is going to vary greatly from one to another. 30% is about as high as you might want to go for small maintenance. Across the board midsized guys tend to wind up in the 15-25% range. If you look at the top 100 companies many of them are operating at the 10-12% range. This is ideal. It should be that in an efficient operation a good employee grosses 100K in labor alone. Small guys struggle with inefficiency to they tend to get well under this.

Im calling bullshit on 10 to 12 percent for labor unless you are charging out the ass or labor associated with lawn care.

33% including fair market wage for the owner.

Would like to see wages as a percentage of revenue minus subcontractors and COGS - seems like that would be a better benchmark by creating a level playing field for comparing a hardscapes company with a maintenance company.